Film - showing at a cinema near you
The Baader-Meinhof Complex 
At a hefty two-and-a-half hours, this dense and detailed exploration of a decade in the life of the German terrorist organisation Red Army Faction doesn't make for easy viewing. Beginning in 1967 with the seed-sowing confluence of public riots, a student death at the hands of the police and the assassination of a key left-wing figure, we see how a new kind of radicalism began to flourish in post-Nazi Germany. At its heart sat the trinity of Andreas Baader (Moritz Bleibtreu), Gudrun Ensslin (a thoroughly brilliant Johanna Wokalek) and the older, quieter intellectual Ulrike Meinhof (Martina Gedeck). These early scenes are quite electrifying: fast-paced, intellectually stimulating and carrying the air of revolution. Though there's never a shortage of action in the remainder of the movie, it feels less contagious once we meet the cop attempting to outwit the faction (Bruno Ganz), and events become a steady routine of bombings, assassinations and jailbreaks. Even then, there is more to come: the organisation's three key figures are tried and imprisoned and a new generation begins. It's all just too much. The problem with all this reliance upon action, dates and detail is that - with the exception of Ensslin - the characters slip infuriatingly through one's fingers. There are probably three films in here; what a waste to roll them all into one.
18, 150 mins
I.O.U.S.A.
Debt hardly seems a riveting subject for a movie, though one could perhaps have said the same about the dissolution of a hugely successful energy company, but that didn't stop Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room (2005) from becoming a mighty success. One hopes that the same thing happens to Patrick Creadon's documentary IOUSA, which is a rumination, a call to arms, or at the very least a darn good shake-up on the subject of American national debt (and just as relevant to UK audiences, one suspects). It's facts a-go-go of course - all budget figures and trade deficits and inflation levels. There are even some graphs. But beyond the eggheadedness there is a human touch too, namely in following the progress of the Fiscal Wake-Up Call - an effort to rouse the average American to the dangers of easy credit and not planning for tomorrow. Compulsory (if uncomfortable) viewing, of course, and probably just the sort of thing that ought to be on the high-school curriculum.
U, 85 mins
Easy Virtue
It's not that there's anything particularly spectacular about the plot of Easy Virtue (a Noel Coward play concerning Larita, a female motorcar racer from America who weds a member of the British aristocracy and finds herself thrust up against any amount of stiff upper lips, snobbishness and clipped vowels); it's the fact that the story is executed with such precision and panache. For starters, we welcome the return of Stephan Elliott (director of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert), back after a hiatus of nearly a decade. Joining him we have the reassuring presence of Kristin Scott Thomas and Colin Firth as our lady driver's new in-laws, not to mention new British eye-candy Ben Barnes as her beau. And then, of course, we have Jessica Biel who, as the fashionable, foxy Larita, reveals herself to be an actress of subtlety and wit. It's a keenly observed romantic comedy, stripped of the mushy Hollywood stuff, and soundtracked by Cole Porter. In short, there's very little not to like.
PG, 93 mins
Burn After Reading
A new Coen brothers movie is usually a reason to put out the bunting, and Burn After Reading has promised to be a cause for great celebration. The cast is superlative and there's an intricate plot involving gym bunnies, Google maps and goofballs - truly, it seems to have just about everything. Alas, the only thing it doesn't have is much of a pulse. This time, the brothers are spoofing the espionage movie, and so we begin at the CIA HQ where an operative named Osborne (John Malkovich) has been demoted for alcoholism. Osborne's wife (Tilda Swinton) is having an affair with incurably vain federal marshal Harry (George Clooney), who is also dallying with internet dating, where he meets Linda (Frances McDormand) who works at a gym alongside Chad (Brad Pitt), a man who puts the buff into buffoon. It is via this straggly connection that a computer disc containing all manner of CIA secrets winds up at Chad's gymnasium and feathers start to fly. The Coens' absurd, brittle humour is usually tempered by a warm human presence, and perhaps the problem here is a want of such a figure. There are hints of it in the sweetness of Chad (Pitt, delivering a magnificent turn) and in the ever-wonderful McDormand, but what the Coens have delivered here is an essentially excellent film marred by a clutch of hard-edged caricatures. A little softness wouldn't have gone amiss.
15, 96 mins
Choking Man
At a diner in a particularly multicultural and somewhat raggedy quarter of Queens, New York, we encounter a new take on the mouse-becomes-man story. Jorge (Octavio Gomez Berrios) is an Ecuadorian dishwasher: quiet, considered and overlooked, it is through his eyes that we see much of this world. Jorge is sweet on Chinese waitress Amy (Eugenia Yuan), a fact that makes him loathe his colleague Jerry (Aaron Paul), a thuggish ex-con who will become Amy's boyfriend. Somewhere on the outskirts dances Rick (Mandy Patinkin), the diner's likable Greek owner. The focus, though, is on Jorge. From the animated sequences that illustrate his inner thoughts, to the uneasy exchanges with his violent Spanish room-mate, via an awkward present-giving with Amy, this is the tale of a man trying desperately to muster some kind of energy to propel himself forward. The problem, though, is that this want of propulsion makes Choking Man flag a little as a movie and fall back on a series of tics and quirks rather than anything of true emotional weight.
TBC, 85 mins
Let's Talk About the Rain
In Le Gout des Autres (2000) and Comme une Image (2004), Agnes Jaoui presented herself as a director of quiet strength and great perception. In her third film she reinforces this reputation, this time also playing Agathe, a brittle, self-contained feminist writer with an eye to a political career, who returns to the south of France to deal with the death of her mother. It is here that she meets two film-makers (Jean-Pierre Bacri and Jamel Debbouze) who posit the idea of making a documentary about her. Flattered, Agathe accepts. Yet the filming process will force her to look at herself, her motivations and her past in a way she has never needed to before - and will soon lead her to feel somewhat compromised by the documentary project. For all the subdued subject-matter, this is a bright, witty film with perfect comic timing; a reassuring sign that Jaoui's strength only grows.
12A, 110 mins
Quantum of Solace
The last Bond instalment, Casino Royale, had a louche, easy charm, and although Quantum of Solace picks up where that film left off, it ups the pace from the outset. A heart-thumping car chase across the landscape of northern Italy introduces us to a plot that will swing, branch to branch, across Europe and to Latin America in pursuit of a shadowy organisation that is "everywhere, but you haven't even heard of it". Along the way, the deliciously growly Camille (Olga Kurylenko) leads Bond to her lover Mr Greene (Mathieu Amalric)- a supposedly ethical businessman plotting a coup with a Bolivian general (Joaquin Cosio). As the action shifts, we find that Bond is being trailed not only by gun-wielding villains but also by the CIA and MI6 (gamely represented by the lovely Gemma Arterton). It is, as you'll gather, all go. Daniel Craig's second outing as 007 sees the modern Bond placing less emphasis on the boudoir antics, and more upon the mystery that lies at the heart of the man, as well as his skills at physical combat over a reliance upon mere gadgetry. It works - to an extent: this is a breathless, furious thriller. But what has always made Bond different is those pauses to catch one's breath and enjoy a little light innuendo. And while Craig remains arguably the finest Bond to date, it would be a shame if the plots during his tenure were to let him down. 12A, 106 mins
Zack and Miri Make a Porno
Long before we met Judd Apatow, we had Kevin Smith - helmsman of Clerks, and, one imagines, probably a bit ruffled by the challenge to his slacker-king crown by that whippersnapper Mr Apatow. So, here again he rises, this time roping in slacker-prince Seth Rogan as our pale, podgy hero Zack, who seeks to pay the bills by making an amateur porn flick with his best friend Miri (Elizabeth Banks). Actually, the crudest thing about Zack and Miri Make a Porno is its title. Yes, there's a fair bit of lewdness, potty-mouthing, references to numerous sexual proclivities and squelchy bodily functions, but essentially this is a love story. Somehow in the decidedly unromantic environs of a porn-shoot, Zack and Miri are destined to realise that they are, in fact, stupidly in love with one another. However, the sweet and the tawdry do not make altogether comfortable bedfellows, and while this is in many ways a charming lil' movie, it's hard to overlook Smith's attempts to make light of the porn industry, which, lest we forget, is in no way sweet or romantic or lovely.
18, 102 mins
W
Oliver Stone has assembled the cast of W the way most people draw up a Fantasy Football team: Thandie Newton as Condi Rice, Richard Dreyfuss as Dick Cheney, Jeffrey Wright as Colin Powell. And then we have Josh Brolin's turn as George W Bush himself - surely the stuff of Oscar-nominations. This is a biography of the outgoing 43rd American president, covering everything from his messed-up youth and strained relationship with his father to the infamous pretzel incident and the Iraq war. At times it's a little Bush-by-numbers, and by and large there is a want of the ferocity and fight that Stone showed in Nixon (1995). There is never a knock-out punch thrown - either by Stone or by writer, Stanley Weiser - though scenes such as Dubya and his father brawling in the Oval Office hint at the film that might've been. Still, for those buoyed by Bush's departure, it's a good film in which to wallow.
15, 129 mins
Pride and Glory
Edward Norton and Colin Farrell unite here in a multi-generational family cop drama. It's the tale of Ray (Norton), the latest in a long line of New York police officers, who finds his loyalties thrown into disarray when investigating a case that appears to involve his own brother and brother-in-law. Cinematic history is not short on movies worrying over the moral dilemmas of New York cops, and the great disappointment here is that director Gavin O'Connor never allows the film to rise above the formulaic and the flimsy. It's especially dispiriting when in Norton and Farrell we have two actors capable of conveying both hulking masculinity and gentle intelligence. You wonder sometimes how these things ever get made, and why their stars even bother to sign up for such projects. There are strong performances here and a sense of well-sprung tension, but both are overshadowed by a feeling of weary cliche.
15, 130 mins
Ghost Town
There's a lovely, jaunty gait to Ghost Town's walk; a screwball comedy of the old school, and something of a love letter to New York City. It's the story of a mardy dentist named Bertram Pincus (a fabulous Ricky Gervais) who is officially dead for seven minutes on the operating table and ever after finds himself as some kind of conduit between the living world and the afterlife - a position that means he is continually pestered by restless ghosts willing him to take care of all their unfinished business. Among these ghoulish mitherers is Frank (Greg Kinnear), a smooth, philandering city-boy who got hit by a bus and now wants Bertram to prevent his lovely (if emotionally crisp) widow Gwen (Tea Leoni) from marrying human rights lawyer Richard (Billy Campbell), whom he suspects is after her cash. It's not an easy task - Bertram after all lives in the same block as Gwen and has to date been unrelentingly misanthropic in her presence. Still, with a little bit of effort it seems inevitable that one of those deliciously mismatched romances should unravel. Ghost Town bears close resemblance to so many films that have passed before - but few have done the whole dead-meets-living romcom schtick with such wit and warmth.
12A, 102 mins
Hunger
Steve McQueen's debut feature takes the story of the IRA's hunger strike of 1981 and grips it by the horns. Led by Bobby Sands (then ensconced in the Maze Prison, Northern Ireland), the protest was against the British government's refusal to recognise the incarcerated of the IRA as political prisoners. We begin with new inmate Davey Gillen (Brian Milligan), who is led to the jail's notorious H block where the residents are embarking upon a blanket protest, refusing to wear regulation uniform. Meanwhile prison guard Raymond Lohan (Stuart Graham) lives in constant fear of attack and passes his days forever looking over his shoulder. All this seems a precursor to our introduction to Sands himself (Michael Fassbender), whose journey to skin and bones fills most of the second half of the movie. McQueen seems to make Sands's increasingly emaciated body almost a work of art, bringing a powerful physicality to what is a very visual film. The movie's pivotal scene, though, takes the form of a ten-minute conversation between Sands and a priest (Liam Cunningham) in which the man of the cloth asks the prisoner the ultimate use of his protest. What makes this scene especially strong is the sudden realisation that words are noticeably absent elsewhere in the film: noise, yes; words, no. It's these unusual assaults on the eye and the ear that give McQueen's debut such magnificent, sinewy vigour.
15, 90 mins
Of Time and the City
Terence Davies's love-letter to Liverpool is one of 2008's most exquisite films. An autobiographical foray occasioned by the city's current reign as Capital of Culture, it takes us through archive film back to the 1940s and 50s of the director's youth: to his working-class neighbourhood, his church-going days and the years leading up to the city's Merseybeat, Mop-Top explosion. But this is no obvious trip down memory lane; the Fab Four and the football get little look-in. Rather it's Peggy Lee, Mahler and Joyce that rush to the fore. It is Davies's personal recollections that feed this documentary: his relationship to homosexuality and God - not to mention the royal family (which he terms "the Betty Windsor show"). The observations are whip-smart, unapologetic, and, you sense, a lifetime in the making. They are the kind of realisations that come only with distance. Davies left Liverpool in the 1970s, and towards the end he wonders "Where are you, Liverpool I have loved?" On cue comes the footage of demolished terraces and tumbling brickwork. It's the age-old swell of nostalgia for a city that you left behind and now greets you as a stranger.
PG, 72 mins
Gomorrah
This bare-knuckled movie from Matteo Gorrone is something of a hard, bleak triumph. It knots together several separate stories surrounding the Camorra, the Naples-based equivalent of the Mafia. So we find the still-green teenager desperate to join the fun and sign up to the Camorra, the two dumbasses who try to set up a rival 'business', and then the jaded tailor (exquisitely played by Salvatore Cantalupo) falling in with Chinese manufacturers. From the waste-ground to the apartment block, the settings are miserable, everything sitting beneath a layer of yellowish grime. The film's message is clearly that everything is besmirched, everything tarnished; that the society of this Italian city, indeed the entire country, is so riddled with corruption that it will never truly get clean. One leaves with the sense that the paybacks, the deals, the drama and the violence are all completely inevitable and entirely unfightable. It's a grim message, artfully told.
15, 137 mins
Reviews by Laura Barton
FIRST POSTED
NOVEMBER 13, 2008
